I’ve been following the story because I happen to like this actress, and feminism is an important subject to me. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to it, here’s what happened. Emma Watson is the UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador. After she delivered the speech a couple days ago, a lot of extreemly critical and threatening messages were posted on 4chan, which I won’t spend time to discuss, but they were hideous, and the whole internet blew up over them. Since then, a viral marketing outfit has come forward, claiming to have posted the messages as a hoax, and now people are going back and forth with that little morsel.

“Just goes to show how easily these feminist extremists can smear innocent people with calls of “misogyny” and how quick the white knights are to leap to their defence and join the baying mob without any fact checking.”

“And Emma has revealed HER real motive and thats to be queen of the world. Its always the quiet ones.”

There’s a lot of that. Lots and LOTS of that talk. I don’t want to rot your braincells with too much more of it, but it’s a real thing, and it should shock and bother us. Frightened or angry people, who are just plain confused about why women would want to stand up and call for empowerment, are condemning either her personally or feminism generally. They call out what they see as foolishness or aggression; but the cause is not about man-hating. To quote from the speech:

“Gender equality is your issue, too. To date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society. I’ve seen young men suffering from illness, unable to ask for help for fear it will make them less of a man. I’ve seen men fragile and insecure by what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality, either.”

For anyone out there who still thinks that misogyny is not a real thing, google it. There are huge communities of angry men who seem to genuinely fear women who have autonomous control over their own lives.
Just look at the comments in the article: deny, deny, deny! Insult! Condemn! It’s as if the knee-jerk reaction of these people was to presume the worst of intentions on the author and the women being discussed, and they gushed out all those ugly feelings onto the comments section to voice that women are not being unduly criticized for requesting fairness.

I think some of those commenters are simply misogynystic, but there is another group being represented in them, too. Those of you who do not think women should be mistreated, but think the word “feminist” means “angry man-hater lady,” need to start defining your terms and come to grips with what you really can call yourself. It’s time for that to change. When men cannot coexist as equals with women and vice versa, their relationship is necessarily going to be tainted with some level of disrespect. Friendship, love, and respect require vulnerability, and that cannot be part of a relationship in which one party looks at the other as a category first and a partner second.

If you think people should be in charge of their own lives without regard to gender, if you think people should be offered equal respect, regardless of gender, you’ve embraced the feminist goals. It’s time to stop making a war out of this, and call it what it is: a cooperative effort to bring about something we all need.

Like this:

Gotta love a good digital musician, right? Nick Bertke has produced some intriguing mixes with an otherworldly free-spirited feel and fast rhythm. I know that trance music is not for everyone, but people like Bertke definitely demonstrate the veracity and capabilities of the medium (even for people who aren’t baked out of their brains in a nightclub). I think I could work out to this.

Happy Easter! I made some fake Reese’s eggs for a church get together. They aren’t all that complicated; if you’ve ever made peanut butter chocolate desserts, the recipe is kind of standard fare. There are a dozen different ways to do this, but this one is simple- just five ingredients, and all of them are common (six, if you want to count the fact that I did some in white chocolate).

When the peanut butter mix stuff is done, chill it in the refrigerator until it’s firm. Form egg shapes on a piece of wax paper, then put them back in the fridge to chill again (this part takes a while- maybe thirty minutes or more). When the mix is firm again, put the chocolate in your microwave for 20 seconds, stir, then return to the microwave for 20 more seconds. Do not overcook the chocolate, and do not fail to stir it between heating- it should be nicely fluid by the second pass through the microwave. Remove the eggs from the fridge and try to work quickly.

It’s easiest to coat the eggs by picking them up individually and spooning chocolate around the edges first Then set the egg on the waxed paper and drop chocolate on the top and smooth. The peanut butter mix softens quickly, so I find it helps to have them on plates of five or six each- take one plate out at a time to avoid having them all get mushy as you’re working.

They taste just like the real things, (a little better in my humble opinion) and although they are super fattening, at least it’s fattening ingredients that you know about, instead of whatever processed evil spirits are living in the celophane-wrapped candy packets, right? Does that count for anything? At about 300 calories apiece, well… anyway they’re delicious.

Text under Turtle on Puzzle Stack:
“How did you get all the way to the top of these puzzle pieces?” asked the bird.
“The ladder,”replied the turtle.
“That doesn’t explain much. How could a turtle climb a ladder?” asked the bird.
“Because,” said the turtle, “I am wearing socks.”

I am preparing to fast for several hours before I go in to the hospital tomorrow and have a test done. Apparently, my lungs have decided not to participate in life, and in response I will be having a gigantic robot arm of death shoved up my nose and into my lungs, where it will tear a chunk of my lung-flesh out so the hospital folks can do lab stuff to it, leaving me a tattered, bleeding stump of humanity, but probably better off for the procedure. I’m being pretty brave about it, considering how badly the torment will surely be, but the fasting part really doesn’t appeal to me. It’s going to be like seven hours between meals. I decided to fortify myself with a batch of lemon bars and some bacon.

So, bacon bowls with a baked egg. You take three strips of bacon, cut them in half, weave them into square, and place them in the freezer on a small piece of tinfoil. Leave them for like half an hour so they are not frozen, but firm enough to mold into a bowl shape inside the tinfoil. (I like to wrap a second piece of tinfoil around them after that so the bacon grease doesn’t slosh out into the oven.) Bake them at 375 for about thirty minutes, then carefully pour the grease out, put an egg into the bowl and return it to the oven for another thirty minutes. Sprinkle a little oregano on top and eat. I should make a set of images to go with this. Maybe a post for later.

When I was a little girl, my family had a poetry anthology with this little number in it:

The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.

-Charles Synge Christopher Bowen

We kids used to laugh about it because it sounded so funny. As an adult, I can see a little more of the point the writer was making.

The rain it raineth on the just

And also on the unjust fella;

But chiefly on the just

Because the unjust steals the just’s umbrella.

It is so often that the person who’s just doing his job, living his life, has to carry the person who is not. Isn’t it funny (or not funny) how often the unjust then wastes the resources someone else produced and then turns around to demand more?

So now Facebook is being called out, yet again, for (allegedly) violating people’s privacy by scanning messages marked private and selling user demographics from them. It bothers me when companies do things like that- the rule of law is a valuable principle, and should be cared for and respected. When people abuse the legal system like this, the end result to the rest of us is new legislation. Laws piled on top of laws to clarify the mountain of laws we’re all already buried under. When this is finally brought to that point, the corporate fatcats at Facebook will have no new opinion about my privacy, nor will they decide that they now have enough money. They will find a new loophole, and continue on. We will all have some new legislation, whether it will directly affect us or not.

Like this:

Here’s a song by Django Django with an intriguing video of the Indian Death Well riders. I think the song works well with the video footage and the notion of facing death simpy because it is your job. The men have such an interesting perspective on risk, don’t they? I’m not a hero, there is an element of danger in everything…

Some stuff about me and my blog:

Link to anything I post if you'd like, but pretty please do me a favor and leave the pictures here. :) Thanks!

Giuseppi made his name. It took forever.

Featured Artist

Giuseppi Giraffe
My first featured artist will be a personal favorite. This young giraffe has accomplished many great works of greatness and makes an excellent placeholder until I decide who's going to go in this spot in his place.
Here he is pictured with one of his mosaics. If you squint, you can see it's his name.